Developing software can be a complex task. As such, many tools have been developed to assist in reducing the complexity of this task. Software code may be composed, edited and executed within such a tool so that the tool may monitor the execution of the code and trace the flow of the execution.
Tracing is fairly common in software development. However, typically, software development tools produce program execution trace files in one of two formats. The first of these formats is plain text, which is suitable for viewing with text editors that are plentiful and freely available. The second of these formats is a binary format, which is only suitable for viewing with specialized tools, for instance, the tool that created the program execution trace file.
The first format is problematic in that the type of visual information that may be displayed is limited to plain text, that is, text without special attributes (e.g., colors, indentation) which are often helpful in understanding the structure of the program execution trace file at a glance. If the developer wishes to format the plain text trace file, say to identify key features of the trace file, it is up to the developer to devise formatting routines. Such a formatting routine would be run with a plain text trace file as input and produce a formatted trace file as output. The second format is problematic in that the binary format is typically proprietary and custom tools are required to parse and display the program execution trace file. The developer may not be able to share the program execution trace file with a colleague that does not have access to the tool that produced the trace file.
Accordingly, a solution that addresses, at least in part, this and other shortcomings is desirable.